"People often use "court packing" to describe changes to the size of the Supreme Court, but it's better understood as any effort to manipulate the Court's membership for partisan ends. A political party that's engaged in court packing will usually violate norms that govern who is appointed (e.g., only appoint jurists who respect precedent) and how the appointment process works (e.g., no appointments during a presidential election).
"Seen from this perspective, the Barrett appointment is classic court packing. The president nominated a hardline conservative who appears to question major parts of U.S. constitutional law. And the Senate majority changed its procedural rules – invented to deny Merrick Garland a hearing – to ram through the nomination as people were voting."
You siding with the partisan politics of members of a supposedly-neutral court who were put there to make the court partisan, doesn't make it normal.
They "packed" a court with a single justice? That's "packing"? In no other area would you ever consider the addition of a single individual to be "packing" anything. The term "packing" is being misused here as an emotional trigger word to cynically attack the court's legitimacy. That is propaganda, not precision.
Precisely, packing refers to what the cited article explains as the Democrat long term plan to fill the court with liberal justices: "If Democrats win 53 or 54 seats, it's far more likely that Congress will expand the Court."
From the article:
"People often use "court packing" to describe changes to the size of the Supreme Court, but it's better understood as any effort to manipulate the Court's membership for partisan ends. A political party that's engaged in court packing will usually violate norms that govern who is appointed (e.g., only appoint jurists who respect precedent) and how the appointment process works (e.g., no appointments during a presidential election).
"Seen from this perspective, the Barrett appointment is classic court packing. The president nominated a hardline conservative who appears to question major parts of U.S. constitutional law. And the Senate majority changed its procedural rules – invented to deny Merrick Garland a hearing – to ram through the nomination as people were voting."
You siding with the partisan politics of members of a supposedly-neutral court who were put there to make the court partisan, doesn't make it normal.